A tall gray man who seems hurried strides into Butch
Holcombe's small antiques shop, looks around and quickly points
to what looks like a very old brass bugle.

"How old is that?" the man asks. "I've got one from the
Crimean War that looks just like it."

The price is $45, too cheap, in all probability, to be a real
antique.

"To be honest, I don't know," Holcombe replies. "Some say
it's 19th century, but I think it's more likely World War I, or
it could be just a plain old fake."

The aging boomer lifts it to his lips and starts tooting, or
trying to. He manages to squeeze out a few wheezy bugle calls,
such as reveille and taps. And he's hooked.

"I'll give you $30," the tooter says.

Holcombe, 52, quickly consults with his wife, Anita, 53.

"It could be worth 10 times that much, but since I don't
know, well, OK," he says earnestly. "I can't guarantee its age."

The gray-haired customer decides to take the gamble, and the
Holcombe's do, too.

"You never know, sometimes," Butch Holcombe says. "It might
not even be worth $30, but I paid more than that for it and I've
had it a while. So, it's just time to move it."

That's the way it goes in the antiques business, which the
Holcombe's went into a few years ago when he decided to quit his
job as an machinist and she got laid off from an administrative
position.

"We decided to turn our passion and hobby as artifact hunters
into a way to make a living," Anita says.

But it's not their little Greybird Relicsshop in the
Big Shanty Antique Market in Kennesaw that pays their
bills, or the Victorian jewelry, 19th century dominoes, ancient
coins or Civil War bullets they sell on their Web site. It's the
slick-covered, bimonthly American Digger magazine they started
"on a wing and a prayer" in January 2005.

"Butch was tired of 10-hour days, I lost my job, so we just
figured to give it a try," she says. The magazine has struck a
chord, with 1,600 subscribers worldwide.

The magazine, bigger and thicker than the average Newsweek,
is filled with pictures of historic artifacts, such as patent
medicine "miracle cure" bottles, 15th century coins from eastern
Europe, Victorian jewelry and relics dating from the War of 1812
to the Civil War.

It's also full of advertisements from companies that sell
metal detectors and books for history buffs.

The magazine's most popular feature is called "Just Dug,"
several pages of pictures of relics unearthed around the world,
including stuff dug up around Marietta. Much of it, such as a
folding mirror found by Ed Travis of Cobb County, dates from the
Civil War era. Many relics are dug up by members of the North
Georgia Relic Hunters Association or the Georgia Research &
Recovery Club. Travis' mirror was displayed in a recent edition
of American Digger.

Janet Levy, an anthropology professor at the University of
North Carolina-Charlotte, says artifact hunting as a hobby goes
back at least to the days of a Babylonian king 2,500 years ago.

But the hobby is exploding now in popularity in part because
technology has made it easier for buried metallic objects to be
found, says Randall Miller, a history professor at Saint
Joseph's University in Philadelphia and an expert on popular
culture.

"People are digging and hunting for relics not just on
battlefields, but in old cisterns and privies, which can be gold
mines for very old bottles," he says.

Miller and other academics say the magazine is tapping into
the same phenomenon that has made "Antiques Roadshow" such a hit
on television.

The Holcombe's, avid relic hunters for years, decided on a
trip to Virginia in 2004 to try to find a way to turn "the hobby
we love into a magazine to cater to people like us." Says Anita,
"We didn't know we couldn't do it."

Butch learned to use graphic design software to lay out the
pages, and they take the finished product to Star Printing in
Acworth. They sent out magazines to relic clubs, Anita began
calling metal detector companies, and they went to press for the
first time about three years ago.

They send copies to U.S. warships and artifact clubs and
organizations like the Federation of Metal Detector and
Archaeological Clubs, the Authentic Artifact Collectors
Association and the Smithsonian Institution.

"We got a Web site up right away for the magazine so other
groups could link to it," Anita says. "Payment for articles
includes three comp copies and a free ad if the author desires.
Artifact hunters like to show off their finds."

Miller says most people interested in hunting for artifacts
are in their 50s and 60s.

In New Mexico and Arizona, people look for pottery and Native
American artifacts. Some folks walk beaches with metal
detectors, looking for lost jewelry, and in the West, people
hunt for gold and items from cowboy days, says Jerry Smith of
Boom Town & Relic Hunters in Washington.

"There are magazines out there for all sorts of things,"
Butch Holcombe says. "Ours concentrates on things that are newly
dug up. The real interest is in seeing what's just been found
because it says a lot about what's still out there. And there's
an awful lot.